necropolis144

[necropolis144]

Wâhkôtowin

I saw a cuzzin tag one of my posts with "wâhkôtowin", which is great timing, as that's the first teaching I wanted to share!

My Cree people don't really have a name for our religion.

(Side note, why do some religions get to be religions and ours are just "spirituality" 👀)

But if I were to choose one Cree word that really encompasses my people's culture and spiritual beliefs, it would be wâhkôtowin.

Here's how you say it:

I often see wâhkôtowin translated as "the act of being related" or "interconnection"

But to really understand wâhkôtowin you need to know a little bit about the Cree worldview, which has a LOT in common with many other Indigenous nations.

My people are animists, which means we believe that that spiritual energy exists in everything. We believe that spirit exists not just in humans, but in animals, plants, rocks, water, clouds, wind etc etc etc and that all of these things contain life.

We believe that all life is sacred. A person is no more or less sacred than a rabbit, a rabbit is no more or less sacred than a bit of parsley, which is no more or less sacred than a mountain, a bug, a daisy, a whale, you get what I mean?

Wâhkôtowin acknowledges the connection between each of these beings.

Now, you may wonder: if all life is sacred, how is it okay to kill and eat another life form? Or for my American relatives: how can burger be wâhkôtowin?

(Sorry I had to)

That brings us to another connected teaching. Natural law. And one of the basic laws of nature is that life consumes life.

It is natural for the bison to eat grass. It is natural for me to eat the bison. When I die, it is natural for the worms and bacteria and fungi to eat ME. When the molecules that make up me are broken down into the soil, it is natural for the tree to soak up my nutrients.

Not to be Elton John on main, but basically this is a circle of life kinda deal!

Wâhkôtowin teaches us to acknowledge that circle of life. If I cut down the forest, the bird has no where to build its nest, which means there's no... I dunno bird poop to fertilize the grass for the buffalo, WHATEVER, I'm running out of organisms here

My point is, there is no action that any organism can take that doesn't have an impact on another life. And those impacts build up into a great big interconnected web of WÂHKÔTOWIN!

Make sense?

So how do we apply wâhkôtowin to our modern world?

Let's take the example of my shitty plastic ruler. I bought my shitty plastic ruler at the dollar store. An underpaid teenage cashier rung me up, and it was probably another underpaid teenager that stocked the shelves. My ruler was probably dropped off by a delivery person, driven there by a truck driver, came over the ocean on a big ass boat, was manufactured by a team of (probably also underpaid) skilled laborers in China. That plastic is made out of petroleum, the crude oil formed from the fossilized remains of teensy weensy microorganisms that lived millions of years ago!

How many lives is that? A bajillion? A bajillion different life forms, all with their own individual histories and needs and experiences, all coming together to produce my shitty plastic ruler that I paid a buck fifty for at dollarama.

How can we honour all of those lives in our use of the shitty plastic ruler?

We don't waste! We take care of our belongings so that they last. We don't take more than we need. We treat the underpaid teenage employee with kindness. We advocate for the rights of the laborers, truck drivers, and delivery people. We refuse to support damaging resource extraction practices. We don't buy the newest model of shitty plastic ruler every year as a status symbol.

Wâhkôtowin teaches us to be mindful (and even demuuuuure) of the ways that our actions impact not just the humans near us, but our world as a whole.

So I'm gonna share as many Gaza fundraisers as I can. Because wâhkôtowin.

I'm gonna share my change with the homeless relative downtown. Because wâhkôtowin.

I'm going to learn about the people who are different from me. Because wâhkôtowin.

I'm going to try and reduce how much I consume. Because wâhkôtowin.

And I'm going to do my best to teach all of you how much this land and its history mean to my people, and try to spread my hope that there is a better way for all of us to live, if we remember that we really are all related. Because wâhkôtowin.

THE NATIVE AMERICANS USED EVERY PART OF THE BUFFALO. USE EVERY PART OF THE SHITTY PLASTIC RULER.

Ekosi

♡

[necropolis144]

ppl on this website will say that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it and then recycle the same "This Marginalized Queer Group Is Actually Bad And It's Actually Okay To Bully Them And Harass Them" discourse every year like clockwork

[necropolis144]

one time I saw a photo of a skinned whale/dolphin flipper on reddit or something and I've just never recovered

there's just. A paw in there.

[necropolis144]

one time I saw a photo of a skinned whale/dolphin flipper on reddit or something and I've just never recovered

there's just. A paw in there.

[necropolis144]

"Egg" jokes piss us off. They're deeply rooted in exorsexism, transinvestigation, intersexism, and outing.

You cannot tell the gender of someone from some behaviors they have. And why, why must they be a binary trans woman or binary trans man?

Why can't they be gender non-conforming and cisgender? Why are you automatically assuming that feminine presentation or God forbid "feminine hobbies" makes a person a woman? Or that masculine presentation or "masculine hobbies" makes a person a man?

Why can't they be non-binary? Why can't they be cis gender and transsex? Where is the room for people to discover they are androgynous, neutral, null, genderless, xenine, outherine, aporine, multigender, etc?

And don't get us started on the sheer amount of people insisting intersex people must be trans because of how their body develops (ie: cis women with hyperandrogenism who are fine with their androgenized traits being told they "must be trans man" because there can't POSSIBLY be a way that a WOMAN would like being androgenized. Or cis men with Klinefelter Syndrome who "must be trans women" because there's NO WAY a MAN can be fine with having BREASTS.)

Egg culture is just "progressive" transinvestigation. It's not cute. There's so many people who communicate how uncomfortable it makes them and how they get deeply pushed back into the closet, or forcefully assigned a gender they do not have.

If a person wants to make an egg joke about themself, that's one thing. But why the hell is it so normalized to tell people they don't truly know who they are and that they're in denial and need to be "cracked open"?

[necropolis144]

are you tme or tma

"i know you're nonbinary but which of these two arbitrarily constructed gender categories do you fit into" genuinely are you having a laugh

[necropolis144]

can i say that i just flat out can't stand all of these posts that treat trans women like mythical unicorns who are so uniquely traumatized that nobody else could ever understand them ever. because i am so sick of it. i love the trans women in my life. i don't treat them as though they are fairy goddesses that bless little old me with their presence. i just think that's a really weird way to talk about a minority because it's lowkey dehumanizing. trans women are just people like anyone else. treat them with the same respect you would give anyone.

it all makes my skin crawl and my bones shake with rage lmfao

[necropolis144]

im so sick of the argument of "well what if the ai becomes sentient thats why we shouldnt make robot slurs" THE PROBLEM IS NOT PEOPLE HATING GENERATIVE AI THE PROBLEM IS THAT PEOPLE ARE FROTHING AT THE MOUTH FOR AN "acceptable target" TO DIRECT WHAT IS CLEARLY REPACKAGED ANTI-BLACK RACISM AT. "i'm a robotkin and its so sad theyre making slurs about robots :(" THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT THE FUCKING AI OH MY GOD THEY'RE NOT CALLING YOU SLURS FOR BEING A ROBOTKIN ITS RACISM. ITS JUST RACISM "but against robots so its ok" NO!!!!

[necropolis144]

[necropolis144]

rabbits, clovers 🍀࿐ ࿔･ﾟ

[necropolis144]

this is like. borderline rapey type shit. pregnancy is a complicated subject for anyone, especially trans men especially right now. this isn't a silly thing anybody should be throwing around. if a man was commenting "i want to get you pregnant" under a cis woman's post i'm sure a lot more people would be a lot less okay with it. but somehow it's fine when it's a group that frequently has pregnancy weaponized against them and who also lack reproductive care even when they want it because people don't want to believe men can get pregnant.

i realized some people (mostly cis girls) just see trans men as an mpreg material. cuz like i see a post of an attractive trans man and the comments are all like "i'm so glad you're trans because i wanna get you pregnant and i actually can". and even some attractive cis men get comments like "i wanna get you pregnant". it's so fucking creepy. i don't mind it when people say that about a male character they like, i do that too, but telling an actual man that you want to get him pregnant is absolutely disgusting. oh and some people "jokingly" draw said attractive trans men pregnant too and i also find it disgusting. and then they defend this shit by saying "it's just a drawing it can't hurt anyone!". some of them do the same thing to trans women too because "pregnancy = euphoria" so simply trans women will "love" it.

why are people so obsessed with pregnant men anyway?? i remember it being just a silly fictional fandom thing but now it's gone WAY too far to the point it started hurting real people.

This is transandrophobia.

[necropolis144]

this is like. borderline rapey type shit. pregnancy is a complicated subject for anyone, especially trans men especially right now. this isn't a silly thing anybody should be throwing around. if a man was commenting "i want to get you pregnant" under a cis woman's post i'm sure a lot more people would be a lot less okay with it. but somehow it's fine when it's a group that frequently has pregnancy weaponized against them and who also lack reproductive care even when they want it because people don't want to believe men can get pregnant.

i realized some people (mostly cis girls) just see trans men as an mpreg material. cuz like i see a post of an attractive trans man and the comments are all like "i'm so glad you're trans because i wanna get you pregnant and i actually can". and even some attractive cis men get comments like "i wanna get you pregnant". it's so fucking creepy. i don't mind it when people say that about a male character they like, i do that too, but telling an actual man that you want to get him pregnant is absolutely disgusting. oh and some people "jokingly" draw said attractive trans men pregnant too and i also find it disgusting. and then they defend this shit by saying "it's just a drawing it can't hurt anyone!". some of them do the same thing to trans women too because "pregnancy = euphoria" so simply trans women will "love" it.

why are people so obsessed with pregnant men anyway?? i remember it being just a silly fictional fandom thing but now it's gone WAY too far to the point it started hurting real people.

This is transandrophobia.

[necropolis144]

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

[necropolis144]

Soap

[necropolis144]

Not sure why this person wanted to send this particular message anonymously, but they did so here we go. Message starts now:

Hello days left I just want to say thank you for making this blog seeing your post from informative to hope core has help me a lot these past months.

Now I would like to share that these past months since he got back into office I have repeatedly burn myself out trying to keep up with the news and trying to stay informed and worried about taking a break and missing some major news that would effect my family and our lives in general

So I would like to share this link (I have put this link at the bottom of this message)

This websites tracks all the things the administration plans to do or has completed it has been a massive help on reducing my doom scrolling and burn out because even when I take a break I hold some comfort that I can be informed on what I missed when I am mentally prepared to help out in any way I can again.

The internet can be overwhelming do not feel bad for taking a break and caring for yourself because living and being happy is exactly what they don’t want.

So wanted to share this here in case anyone else has struggled with this same problem. I sent this to you days left so hopefully this reaches as many people as possible and I hope this method can also help anyone else who has been burn out from the overload of negative information. And finally remember always play Tetris to relieve yourself of any disturbing content. Take it easy one day at a time.

I have looked at this link and it’s very helpful. Thanks to this person and I leave you with a website where you can play Tetris. 1,233 days left.

[necropolis144]

unemikoo

[necropolis144]

they should make a version of socializing that doesn’t make you feel like you’re still the weird 12 year old kid that doesn’t know why she’s not normal like the other kids